Five weeks is a long time. The 35-day federal government shutdown that occurred in late 2018 into early 2019, the last time the government closed, was the longest in U.S. history .

More than six years later, we're in another shutdown , and as Democrats and Republicans remain divided on a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government, it's a situation we could be in for a while.

Sen. Mitch McConnell was the GOP's Senate leader during the last shutdown and faced significant heat in his home state. The union for corrections works at the state's five federal prisons, who were tired of mandatory shifts and no pay, put up billboards across Kentucky calling on the senator, who's since stepped down from party leadership and is retiring at the end of next year, to "End the shutdown now!"

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